


Cat Café

by PreferenceTaken



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Cat cafe AU, Cats, Fluff, Literally the fluffiest thing you will ever read, M/M, One Bad Pun, Panicked Jeno, flirty jaemin, just pure fluff, they fall in love, zero angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 17:55:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15690432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreferenceTaken/pseuds/PreferenceTaken
Summary: Jeno, extremely allergic to cats, visits a cat cafe.Jaemin, cute employee of said cat café, catches his attention.Or: Jeno, a panicked gay, tries to flirt with Jaemin, a confident gay. Even though he's an idiot, they fall in love anyway.





	Cat Café

Jeno is a gigantic idiot. In his eighteen years of his life, he has never not been extremely allergic to cats. Yet here he stands, allergy pills halfway digested, mask on face, and one hand on the door handle of the little Cat Café on his street corner.

It’s not his fault he loves cats, dang it. He just couldn’t help himself when he looked at their adorable little faces and squishy bellies, he just _had_ to pet them. Even if that meant watery eyes, a giant sneezing attack of about twenty sneezes per minute, and ultimately wanting to give up on life. He just loved them too much.

  
He takes a deep breath and steps into the shop, making his way into a brightly lit area. _What a cute set-up_ , Jeno thinks, _I could spend hours in here petting cats._

  
He removes his mask and takes in the many tables that hold humans adoring purring cats, the counter full of pastries, the cute boy wearing cat ears behind the counter, the giant chalkboard menu, the cat face wallpaper _-_

  
Jeno almost wheezes as he whips his head back to the boy.

  
Standing behind the counter was perfection, in the form of a boy wearing a soft, oversized white sweater and ripped black skinny jeans. His first thought, after regaining the ability to think, is _our cats are going to be so lucky to have such a perfect dad._

  
His second thought, after mentally face-palming due to the high level of embarrassment from the first thought, is _nobody’s that perfect_.

  
When he glances up towards the guy’s face to check that thought, he internally combusts.  
Number one, perfect stranger did have a perfect face, with a perfect smile and features carved perfectly (he makes a mental note to find a new adjective), and two, perfect stranger is staring right at him.

  
Jeno, being the classy man he is, decided to smoothly walk over, introduce himself, and woo perfect stranger with his gorgeous eye smile.

  
In reality, Jeno half walks, half stumbles towards the perfect stranger, bumping into two tables on the way. When he gets up to the counter, face blazing red, he says a small, awkward hello and after a couple seconds, he manages a smile.

  
_Nice Jeno!_ He thinks, _you’ve captured his heart with your baby giraffe impression_.

  
Perfect stranger, or Jaemin, after a quick glance at the cat shaped name tag, smiles at him, and Jeno proceeds to melt into a pile of goo.

  
“Hey there handsome, what can I get for you?” Jaemin asks. Jeno, who had finally began to calm down and act like a normal human being, almost keeled over. This beautiful, perfect, magnificent angel had called him handsome?? Jesus take the wheel.

  
“Um.” Jeno eloquently replies. “A cat?”

  
Jaemin snorts. “How about we start with what you want to drink first.”

  
“Oh. Just a strawberry milk please.” Jeno quickly replies, dying inside.

  
“Sounds good, pick a table and I’ll be right over with your drink and a cat,” Jaemin says with a wink. He turns around and gets to work, leaving Jeno standing there like a love-struck fool.

  
_Jeno! You IDIOT!! Can you at least try to regain some of your dignity? So what if Jaemin is perfect? You’re pretty darn good looking too, just be fun and flirty. You totally got this._

  
After that totally normal mental pep talk, Jeno turns around with a small amount of confidence and heads to a small booth in the corner. Luckily, he chooses a spot with a prime view of the counter.

  
Jaemin has his strawberry milk in a glass bottle, and is currently holding a fat, orange cat.

  
Jeno feels his heart grow twenty times bigger. Not only is Jaemin carrying this gigantic, plump cat, but he’s also cooing at it with a blinding smile. The cat, enjoying the attention, starts purring and snuggling up against Jaemin.

  
It takes every ounce of willpower inside him to not whip out his phone and start taking photos of the eighth wonder of the world, aka Jaemin snuggling a fat cat.

  
Jeno lets his head drop against the table. How could he be this whipped already? It’s been a total of seven minutes and he’s already planning future dates.

  
Taking Jaemin to restaurants, and not acting like a total fool? Check. Inviting Jaemin over to his house and snuggling on the couch while watching movies? Check. (Take that, cat.) Taking Jaemin to the beach and seeing a shirtless Jaemin?

  
Jeno chokes at the image his mind ~~un~~ helpfully supplies.

  
“You okay there?”

  
Jeno jerks up to see Jaemin standing above him, amused smirk on his face. Jeno splutters out a “yeah, yeah I’m fine! Super good!” He also throws up a double thumbs up, to doubly assure Jaemin of his well-being. Totally giving off that fun and flirty vibe.

  
Jaemin just laughs and sets the strawberry milk down where Jeno’s head had previously been.

  
“Alrighty then.” He goes back to grab the cat he had been holding, and then comes waddling back.

  
“Here’s Louie, one of my favorite cats in the entire world.” Jaemin says, as he plops the humongous kitty into Jeno’s arms.

  
Jeno holds his fingers out for Louie to sniff, and after he’s been deemed acceptable, he begins to pet the chubby cat.

  
Louie immediately began to purr very loudly, causing Jeno to let out a small giggle.

  
“Cute.” exclaims a voice to his right. Jeno let’s out a shriek after he realizes that no, Jaemin had not walked away after handing him the cat, but had proceeded to sit down right next to Jeno, cornering him into the booth.

  
“Don’t you have a job?” Jeno asked, after letting a few swears escape him.

  
Jaemin just laughed, “I’m on my break right now. Besides, I take my job of flustering you very seriously, thank you very much.”

  
Jeno covered his hands with his face and groaned. Of course Jaemin would be flirty _and_ confident.

  
Once Jeno recovered again, he slowly peeked between the cracks in his fingers to look at Jaemin.  
Up close Jaemin was even more handsome, soft brown hair spilling over his forehead, just stopping under his eyebrows, dark brown eyes shining under the warm shop lighting, and his gorgeous smile showing off perfect teeth.

  
Jeno could write paragraphs about Jaemin’s smile because _wow._ It was a flawless smile that lit up Jaemin’s entire face, and made Jeno want to simultaneously kiss the living daylights out of Jaemin, while continuously complimenting him for existing.

  
“You’re the most purr-fect human being I’ve ever seen,” Jeno blurts out before processing it in his head.

  
When he sees Jaemin’s shocked expression, Jeno realizes that he somehow managed to produce a sentence that contained both a pun, and show exactly how whipped he was.

  
“Um. Ignore that sentence please. I didn’t mean it, well obviously I meant the part about you being perfect, but I didn’t mean to actually say it out loud because that would probably seem a little weird since I just met you but you’re really pretty so-"

  
Jeno stops talking when he looks up to see Jaemin with his head thrown back, dying of laughter.

  
If Jeno thought Jaemin’s smile was perfect, nothing could prepare him for Jaemin’s laugh. It was like a piece of sunshine had fallen to the earth and surrounded Jeno with the warmth of a thousand cat cuddles.

  
_Jaemin’s laugh is_ _a_ _gift to this world,_ Jeno thinks as he sits there in awe, absentmindedly stroking Louie’s soft fur.

  
Jaemin’s laughter finally dies down into little giggles and he wipes his eyes, trying to regain his composure.

  
“Do you always get the boys with your insanely bad puns?” Jaemin asks, smiling at Jeno.

  
Jeno beams back, “did it work on you?”

  
Jaemin nods.

  
“Then I guess it only works on the really pretty ones,” Jeno replies.

  
Jaemin slaps Jeno on the arm, but does nothing to cover the giant smile that splits across his face.

  
When Jeno leaves the Cat Café a couple hours later, his shirt is covered in fur, he has a new contact in his phone, and his cheek still tingles where Jaemin had kissed him.

  
                                                                                      ☆▪☆▪☆

  
Jeno races around his room in a panic, he only had about ten minutes before he had to be at his boyfriend’s (BOYFRIEND’S!) apartment, and he’d just woken up.

  
Of course, if he had just chosen to wake up after the first two alarms, he would have been fine, but he'd slept in until the third alarm, forgetting he hadn’t even set a third alarm in the first place.

  
So now he was tripping over himself trying to get his legs inside his jeans, while throwing the nearest sweatshirt on.

  
Once he was clothed and looked somewhat decent, he ran out the door in a flurry, trying to get there as soon as possible.

  
The universe seemed to be against him today though, as he steps head first into the pouring rain. Deeming it too late to turn around and grab an umbrella, he decides to suck it up and get to a bus as quick as possible.

  
When Jaemin opens the door and sees Jeno, he burst out laughing.

  
“Third alarm, huh?” He snickers.

  
Jeno rolled his eyes as he sweeps Jaemin into his arms, kissing his cheek. “Well if _someone_ hadn’t called so late last night, maybe I would have been able to wake up at the first alarm,” Jeno pouts, clothes soaking wet.

  
Jaemin just laughs as he waddles into the apartment, Jeno clinging onto his back. He heads into his room and comes out with sweats and a sweatshirt (both of which belong to Jeno), and handed them over so Jeno could get changed.

  
When Jeno comes out, he saw that the couch had been set up with a mountain of blankets and pillows, snacks piled up on the table in front of it.

  
It was a movie date day, where the two of them would snuggle up on the couch and watch movie after movie, while it poured down rain on the rest of Seoul.

  
He settles down onto the couch with Jaemin, and they try to decide on what movie to watch, leading to a heated argument about whether a horror movie or a Disney movie would be better.

  
Disney won out, so Jeno started Mulan, snuggling into Jaemin as the beginning credits rolled. 

  
Jeno felt at peace in the world. Here he was on a cold, wet Saturday cuddling the most perfect boy in the world. Absolutely nothing could go wrong.

  
That is until Louie, fat cat extraordinaire, jumped right on top of Jeno, causing him to inhale about ten thousand cat hairs.

  
Jeno, being the idiot he is, had forgotten to take his allergy pills this morning in his state of panic.

  
Jeno felt his eyes start to water and groaned. His nose went from slightly itchy to a full sneezing attack in a matter of seconds, and he was just about ready to give up on life.

  
“Jeno? Are you allergic to something?” Jaemin asked, after handing him a box of tissues, a glass of water, and an allergy pill.

  
“Yeah, cats.” Jeno nonchalantly replied, downing the pill and blowing his nose.

  
“WHAT!? YOU’VE BEEN VISITING ME AT THE CAT CAFÉ FOR MONTHS? WE MET AT THE CAT CAFÉ? WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME YOU WERE ALLERGIC TO CATS??”

  
Jaemin sat shell-shocked after his realization, and Jeno burst out laughing.

  
“You looked really cute in the cat ears babe.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this!! I don't think it turned out too bad for my first fic, but I'll continue working on my writing skills. :D
> 
> I thought this was a pretty realistic story, seeing as Jeno is allergic to cats, yet still has three of them?? (Personally I'd do the same) 
> 
> Also, sidenote- if Mark doesn't come back with the Dreamies, I will personally swim to Korea to riot at SM's door :) 
> 
> Thank you guys so much! I love you!! All of you are immaculate!!!


End file.
